#8 - Knotted Physio - Sleep
Hello Everyone and thank you for joining me today and welcome to the Knotted physio Blog! I wanted to start off by saying a BIG thank you to those of you who have reached out to me and let me know what you enjoy about these posts! It is always a pleasant surprise and I am so appreciative!
In today’s post I wanted to focus on the importance of sleep! Now, I know you’ve always heard the saying, “get your beauty rest!” Well, there is something to that! And by Beauty, I mean being a beautiful person on the inside! I know that if I don’t get my sleep, I'm a little on the grouchy side! So what gives?
We’ve all heard that we need 6-8 hours of sleep; the trend is leaning more towards 7-9 hours of sleep with an average sleep time of 8 hours. Sleep is the time when our bodies do a reset; it allows us to rest and recover.
Did you know that a hormone is what makes us get sleepy? I bet some of you knew this, and others figured it out as you were reading this! That hormone is melatonin. Melatonin is released naturally in our bodies when it gets dark outside.
It has certainly become a popular supplement that people use to aid in their sleep. Because it is a supplement, it is not regulated by the FDA. The biggest concern with that is the quality standards are not regulated and the dosage per tablet may be off.
Do you have trouble sleeping? Have you looked into what your night time routine is? Our lives are filled with an exorbitant amount of artificial light. You may want to check to see if that is a factor in your sleep problem.
A simple solution and experiment that you can try, is simply turning off the tv, tablet or computer 1 hour before bed time and dimming your over head lights to simulate the darkness that happens when the sun goes down. I can say that I have shared this with many of my patients over the last several years and it has been life changing for them. They always come back and say that was so easy, I wish I would have known that sooner.
I can’t say that I am a genius when it comes to sleep disturbances, but I am observant and pay attention to what my patients tell me. I noticed this same pattern time after time. It just made sense to give it a try; and low and behold, it worked.
Years later an unusual and confirming event happened. Another patient of mine was listening to my thoughts on how sometimes we workout our troubles in our dreams, and he lit up. He shared with me that he’d been listening to a podcast about sleep. I got the link and listened. The experts talked about this exact same strategy. The whole time I was listening, I was thinking "woohoo I was right!”
So the whole point of this is be sure to get your beauty rest and if your having trouble sleeping, be sure to ask for outside help. Having someone else’s perspective can bring the answer in to full view!
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Until Next Time, Go enjoy the outdoors!